23 August 2019 | Facts and news from Full Fact
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** FACTCHECK
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** EU immigration to the UK has been bigger than previously thought
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A report released on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics shows that official estimates of migration to and from the UK have been wrong for several years.
It concludes that EU immigration to the UK has been underestimated while non-EU immigration to the UK has been overestimated—and that from now on, migration figures will be called “experimental statistics” rather than “National Statistics”.
So what does all this mean?
Here's five key takeaways ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** It’s not government policy to raise the pension age to 75 ([link removed])
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An article in the Mirror, which has since been corrected, claimed that the government planned to raise the state pension age to 75 over the next 16 years, based on the findings of a report by the Centre for Social Justice think tank.
The Centre for Social Justice (chaired by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith) did make this recommendation, but the Department for Work and Pensions told us that it isn’t government policy.
When I'm 75 ([link removed])
** IMPACT
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** Vaccines and social media: Full Fact’s Will Moy on 5 News ([link removed])
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On Monday, our Chief Executive Will Moy was on Channel 5 News discussing the harms of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media after Number 10 announced that urgent action is going to be taken to improve vaccine uptake in the UK.
Watch a clip ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** How many rapists reoffend? ([link removed])
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Last Sunday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that over the past five years, hundreds of convicted rapists have committed another sexual offence after their release from prison.
This is correct, based on data which the Ministry of Justice shared with us, which shows that each year in England and Wales, roughly 40-60 people are convicted of rape who had previous rape convictions.The data was not previously in the public domain.
Ministers should not be asking the public to take their word for it on something so important, and should always use figures which are publicly available.
Politicians shouldn't refer to unpublished statistics ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** How many refugees does the UK take in? ([link removed])
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In response to a journalist tweeting that “the only refugee the British government wants to support is a cartoon bear”, the think tank Migration Watch claimed that the UK resettled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU member state in 2017. The government has previously made a similar claim: "Since 2016, Britain has resettled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU state”.
It’s technically correct—but resettled refugees are only a subset of all refugees. Overall, Germany, France, Austria and Sweden all granted asylum to more refugees than the UK did in 2017.
Resettlement and granting asylum aren't the same ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** Government hasn’t just “set in stone” the repeal of the European Communities Act ([link removed])
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Last Sunday, Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, described a tweeted photo of himself signing a document as “setting in stone the repeal of the European Communities Act” and underlining “that we are leaving the EU on October 31”.
But the signing of the document in question does not make it any more certain that the European Communities Act will be repealed in the UK, nor that we will leave the EU on 31 October 2019.
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Signed, sealed, disputed ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** ‘Measles free’ doesn’t mean no measles cases ([link removed])
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A number of last week's Sunday papers led with the story that the UK has lost its ‘measles free’ status from the World Health Organisation (WHO) due to increased cases of the disease. Many of the articles mentioned that the measles virus was eliminated in the UK three years ago.
This is correct, but '"eliminated" has a technical meaning here and doesn't mean there was ever a year when there were no cases of the disease.
More context needed ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** 28 attacks a day on police officers? ([link removed])
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Last week, the Daily Express claimed that violent assaults on police officers have risen by a third in just four years, and that 28 attacks a day are being made on police officers.
It’s true that all recorded assaults on officers rose by 18% in the 12 months to March 2019 compared to the preceding year, but due to a major change in the way crime data is collected it’s not possible to say with any certainty what’s happened over the past four years, as the Express did.
The claim that officers are being injured at a rate of 28 attacks per day is an accurate extrapolation from the available data, but it’s a likely underestimate.
Criminal data ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** Did “our boys” change the handball rule? ([link removed])
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Following a controversial disallowed goal in last Saturday's game between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur, football manager Ian Holloway suggested that two recent rule changes in football—the use of video referee assistance (VAR) and the modified handball rule—were not made by “our boys”, and that other people shouldn’t tell “us how to do our own game”.
But all rule changes are made by the International Football Association Board, and need the support of at least two of British football associations (FAs) in order to pass, giving them more power than the FAs of any other country.
This claim needs a red card ([link removed])
** FACTCHECK
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** All these images are not true ([link removed])
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This week we came across a number of false posts circulating on social media:
* An image ([link removed]) shared (and since removed) by a number of celebrities falsely claimed Instagram is making new privacy rules ([link removed]) to make all posts public
* A picture ([link removed]) of women ‘dressing up like 9/11’ was taken in the UK, not Israel ([link removed])
* And 5G didn’t cause birds death in the Hague ([link removed]) (as this post ([link removed]) wrongly claims)
Information rated: false ([link removed])
Thank you very much for your support, and have a great weekend from everyone at Full Fact.
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